A Significant Selection

Bonhams' spring sale features lots by major American artists from the 19th and 20th centuries

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Paul Manship (1885-1966), Diana, 1921. Bronze with brown and verdigris patina, 36 in., inscribed and dated on the base: 'PAUL MANSHIP/ 1921'; and inscribed with foundry mark along the base: 'ROMAN BRONZE WORKS N.Y.' Estimate: $500/700,000

April 30, 2025
Bonhams
580 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10022 t: [phone] www.bonhams.​com

On April 30, Bonhams will bring roughly 90 lots of significant historic American art to the market, including works by renowned 19th- and 20th-century artists N.C. Wyeth, Thomas Moran, Paul Manship and a rare early painting by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Bidding begins at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

With a presale estimate of $500,000 to $700,000, Manship's 1921 bronze Diana is the star lot of the auction, a piece Bonhams specialist Aaron Anderson describes as, "a tour de force within the artist's oeuvre that resides prominently between the frontier of modernism and traditions of archaic design." The piece depicts a moment in the myth of Diana and Actaeon, as told in Ovid's Metamorphosis. While hunting, Actaeon accidentally sees the goddess Diana bathing naked. To punish him, she fires an arrow that turns him into a stag, to eventually be killed by his own hounds.